Facebook Wants A Bigger Presence In The Games Industry, As Per Fidji Simo

Facebook wants to invest in the games industry so that it can have a bigger presence in said industry, according to Fidji Simo — head of the Facebook app. If you don’t know, Facebook is currently working on its VR hub “game” Horizon, which is now accompanied by the newly released mobile app dubbed “Facebook Gaming.”

In an attempt to have a greater presence in the business that we call the games industry, Facebook is looking to take advantage of people looking to interact with other people during this pandemic, as per Simo:

“We’re seeing a big rise in gaming during quarantine.”

Not that I’d advise you to download the Facebook gaming app, but it’s currently up on the Google Play store early to bank on bored folks, and will hit the App Store sometime in the near future according to website techcrunch.com.

If you don’t know, the free app that’s designed around creating and watching live gameplay has more than 700 million of its 2.5 billion monthly users engaged with gaming content, that is if Simo is to be trusted.

In addition to the above, she also had this to say about the Facebook gaming app after rattling off the above numbers:

“Investing in gaming in general has become a priority for us because we see gaming as a form of entertainment that really connects people. It’s entertainment that’s not just a form of passive consumption but entertainment that is interactive and brings people together.”

Nevertheless, Facebook’s VP of gaming, Vivek Sharma, notes that the company is focused on mobile and the new app for streaming because the mobile experience is more “powerful” than computer viewing. Here’s Sharma elaborating on his take:

“We don’t want to be the background window in a Chrome tab while someone is doing their homework or doing something else. With mobile, if you have the app open and you’re using the app, it’s in the foreground. You can’t do anything else on your mobile phone, and that is extremely powerful.”

The main takeaway from this piece is that Facebook wants to further invest in the games industry while bolstering its newly released app’s numbers/performance, due to the current pandemic going on.